Nowadays, in particular in the context of motor vehicles, on-board electrical devices are controlled via a computer providing hardware resources that are designed, in terms of memory capacity and computational power, to execute and to make available to the user, via a human-machine interface, an increasingly high number of functions.
Specifically, modern vehicles often include a multimedia system, a satellite navigation system, a device for monitoring state parameters of the vehicle, etc. These devices are driven via a centralized human-machine interface.
Although the hardware resources integrated into the computer controlling all of these systems regularly improve and therefore make it possible to perform calculations more quickly, the fact remains that the overall boot time of such a computer is increasing.
In general, the multimedia system, with its display screen, is designed so as to be open in order to be able to interface with third-party applications for the purpose of making available to the user, via its display screen, a set of functions provided by a plurality of devices on board the vehicle or that are remote, extending well beyond just multimedia functions of the vehicle.
Nowadays, on-board multimedia systems in vehicles therefore have to allow access and control of an increasing number of functions.
The increasing number of functions to be performed and the necessary development of these functions on open development platforms have had a very negative impact on the boot time of multimedia systems, which is not offset in a satisfactory manner by the increase in power of the hardware resources that are implemented.
Therefore, the effective availability of all of the functions after booting may nowadays require several minutes. The inconvenience caused to users is therefore significant.
To limit this inconvenience, the known solutions are mainly of two types. A first solution involves adapting a technique commonly implemented in “smartphone” mobile communication terminals: this involves never stopping the functions, using a battery to keep them in a low-consumption “standby” operating mode, such that said functions are immediately available for effective use if called upon.
However, this solution exhibits two major drawbacks. First of all, the standby mode, even though it is designed to consume little energy, still consumes energy. Keeping numerous on-board functions in a vehicle in standby, consuming either directly from the battery of the vehicle or from a dedicated specific battery intended to be easily rechargeable, leads in the first case to a reduction in its operating life, the battery of the vehicle having to remain sufficiently charged to guarantee restarting of the vehicle, and in the second case to an excess cost linked to the addition of a dedicated battery.
Secondly, such a low-consumption standby mode is not automatically provided during the development of the functions of the on-board devices in a vehicle. In particular, if the problem with the boot time of the system arises only after the device is launched, for example because numerous third-party applications have been added thereto, the user will not have any means to rectify the inconvenience generated by the long boot time of the system.
In the remainder of the description, reference is made to devices or to functions that are “stopped”, “in standby”, or “in operation”.
“Stopped” is understood to mean that no function of the device is available and making them available requires full booting of the device.
“In standby” is understood to mean that, as seen by the user, the functions of the device are not available, but making them available does not require booting of the device, because this is actually already booted.
“In operation” is understood to mean that the functions of the device are immediately available.
A second solution known to those skilled in the art involves masking the long boot time of the system by endeavoring to make the functions likely to be used first of all by the user always available as a priority. With the increase in the number of functions integrated into the system and the great diversity of users, such a mechanism is however very difficult to implement and often ineffective.